After getting the TLS handshake Error from pianobar on Raspberry Pi running Debian Wheezy ( aka Raspbian ) I decided to get the latest version of Pianobar. This requires building from sourcecode if you’re on the Wheezy release.

The TLS handshake Error can basically be translated to mean “the version of pianobar you’re using is too old” – this is an error that occurs regularly and the solution is always to update to the latest edge version. Packges for Raspbian / Wheezy aren’t going to get updates fast enough for this to be a good option (i.e. to not interrupt your listening ) so you’ll need to build from source.

One of the requirements is basically to have ffmpeg ( it the libraries from it ) installed. Several people will suggest installing ffmpeg from source – which you can do – but if you’re using a “Raspberry Pi model B” and not the latest Raspberry Pi 2.0 – or even if you are – it will take a long time to build ffmpeg from source – maybe 6 hours or more.

If you go this route, and you’re doing it via SSH make sure to use something like screen to keep the process from dying if you get disconnected.

I didn’t want to install ffmpeg and found a good alternative – install the libraries from the backports.

Here’s a script – which is basically my notes from along the way. It is sloppy and has some duplication – created from trial and error – but it worked for me and the duplicate packages is not an issue with apt-get ( if one of them is already installed it will be skipped)

So, run as root or with sudo. Good luck – report issues on the PromyLOPh github page, or leave a comment if you have any adjustments or tweaks or improvements to the script.

If you need to connect to the Lantronix Spider or SpiderDuo KVM-over-IP Devices via a serial connection, for example to change the configuration or reset the password, you need to use a serial console to do this.

I was using an Ubuntu machine with a standard serial / com port ( DB9/RS232 ) and had one of the $4 RJ45 to DB9/RS232 cables

To get connected I ended up installing picocom which I like better than using screen as it seems to be more forgiving if something goes wrong and not lock up the system.

Then I used the command picocom -b 9600 /dev/ttyS0 to connect to the device and got prompt so I could reset the device:

How do I perform the reset?

See details on the lantronix page – you will need to use the reset button on the back of the device in combination with a terminal connection described above.

What is the default password?

Try logging in with the default username, sysadmin, and password, PASS

If that does not work, please use the procedure near the top of page 121 of the Spider User Guide

I forgot my password. How can I reset the Spider to factory defaults?

Use the serial interface with a terminal emulator program set to 9600 or 115200, 8 bit characters, No parity, 1 Stop bit, and No flow control. Within 2 seconds of booting the Spider, press the Esc key a few times to get a => prompt. Type defaults at the => prompt.

If you can’t get the => prompt after several tries at 9600, try 115200. Earlier firmware sets the serial console port to 115200 by default.

When recently using Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) I was remotely connected via the RealVNC client, but was having trouble sending keystrokes like F2 to enter the BIOS, F12 to select a startup device, or F8 to access the Windows startup menu.

This setup is complicated for a few reasons – first I’m using a Mac keyboard. Secondly, OS X remaps the function keys to do things like dashboard, expose, brightness, and volume by default.

After a little searching and trial and error, I found that I can use the free utility included with Mac OS X – AppleScript Editor.app – to send keycodes to the VNC connection. Here’s the code for the applescript you can use to send the F12 key:

If you haven’t seen Intel’s AMT with KVM control – check it out. They say, “with out-of-band management capabilities, including Keyboard-Video-Mouse (KVM) Remote Control,3 Intel AMT allows IT to remotely remediate and recover systems after OS failures. Out-of-band alerting and event logging also help to reduce downtime,” and basically it just makes it really easy to connect to a computer to control it – even access the BIOS etc before it even boots into windows.

If you’ve taken photos and videos with the a RC Quad Copter such as the Dromida Kodo, the X5C, or one of the many Quad Copters sold on Amazon you may have noticed that when you get finished taking photos and videos you have a result like this:

All of the dates and times seem to be on October 1, 2013 shortly after 1:00.

To get the correct timestamps, you can save a file to the SD card named time.txt with the date in the format “yyyy/mm/dd hh.mm.ss”

Use notepad or another text editor to create the file, and name it time.txt with the timestamp all on one line, and then a newline (press ‘enter’) after it. This will be used to set the camera’s clock as long as it has power.

Here are some examples for different timezones – and you can also download files with the current timestamps:

If you have a USB adapter and would like to use it when working with Arduino or Raspberry Pi you may wonder if it is safe to use with a 3v3 system.

Purchasing these on eBay can be cheaper than buying from someplace like Adafruit but the listings often have no documentation on if the chip can be used with 3.3v devices.

You can measure some of the pins to make your own determination. The unit I was working with several pins labeled:

I measured voltage between the GND pin and the TX pin which gave around 1.8 – 2.5V without any data being transmitted. When I sent data to the device the voltages went intermittently to around 3.3 volts or maybe 3.4 volts.

Make sure to get the correct datasheet for the chip you have – some of the chips are slightly different, like the HXD version.

On page 11 of that datasheet it showed the pinout diagram – notice the small circle indicating “pin 1” which should correspond to the small dot on the actual chip:

Pin 4 is labeled VDD_325 and the note says:

RS232 VDD. The power pin for the serial port signals. When the serial port is 3.3V, this should be 3.3V. When the serial port is 2.5V, this should be 2.5V. The range can be from 1.8V~3.3V.

Use this information at your own risk, but what I believe this datasheet is expressing is that if pin4 measures 3.3V then the TX pin will transmit using 3.3V and if it is 5V then it will transmit using 5V.

When I measured pin4 on my PL-2303HX it showed 3.3V and I was able to use it with a raspberry pi with no problems.

If you’ve installed Debian Squeeze on the PogoPlug you’ll notice there is no longer an /sys/module/xce/sections/ or /dev/xce path for you to echo commands to. However, you can still control the LEDs by using the sys -> devices -> platform -> LEDS / GPIO

How to make the LED orange / yellow

You can also try using values 1-255 to control the brightness but I didn’t see much difference between different numbers. ymmv.

Also, if you wish to read the status of the LEDs you can do so by using something like cat with these paths:

cat /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/status:red:fault/brightness

A value of 0 indicates the LED is off.

Most likely if you are running Debian there will be no events that turn the LEDs on – but in case you have issues you can disable system events from triggering the LEDS you also need to change the ‘triggers’ – first check out the existing ones:

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